Poet’s Palace Dungeon Maker Forum Challenge

Dungeons made by EverQuest II players have impressed, inspired and amazed us. We can hardly wait to see what you will do with the recently released Poet’s Palace Dungeon layout. To offer everyone a chance to show off their dungeon decorating skills, we?re pleased to announce the Poet’s Palace Dungeon Maker Forum Challenge!

We have had a lot of fun with Dungeon Maker and hope that you are enjoying it as well! Our team is committed to developing it further over time, with initiatives such as playing as your own character. We outlined a few of the things we’re working on in the May Update Plans for EQII article, so check it out! Creating new ways to enjoy EQII is one of our driving goals!

The Poet’s Palace Dungeon Maker Forum Challenge is a decoration and design challenge. Participants can build their dungeon on any Live Server or the Test Server, subject to the rules below. The Poet’s Palace dungeon layout can be purchased on the Marketplace for the low price of 75 Station Cash or 100 Dungeon Marks!

Comments (13)

I’ve been using the Dungeon Maker off and on since it appeared. It’s fun. easy and makes a nice change of pace. I really like the avatars, particularly the collectible aspect, and I was never bothered by not using my characters. It could be so much more, though.

I can only speak for Freeport since I haven’t looked on any other servers, but the Freeport decorating community, which is very active, motivated and creative, has shown almost no interest in using the Dungeon maker. I asked Mrs Bhagpuss, who knows a lot more decorators than I do, why this was.

Apparently the range of house items that can be placed in dungeons is very limited and the ways and means by which the space can be manipulated are uninspiring compared to what’s possible in a house. I already knew that from a storyteller’s point of view the Dungeon Maker includes almost none of the tools that anyone trying to work with narrative would need.

The problem with DM dungeons isn’t, in my opinion, the avatars. It’s that you can’t make them look how you’d like, you can’t make the mobs do or say what you’d like them to and you have no real control over any if the dynamics. Pretty much all you can do is place things down. For me, that’s enough but for anyone wanting to put in the time and effort that decorators put into houses it’s positively insulting.

All of these concerns were raised, repeatedly and in detail, with pro-active, helpful, positive suggestions, as far back as AoD beta. All the feedback, with the sole exception of the issue of “play as your character” was, and continues to be completely ignored.

If tools were added to the DM to allow players to fully realize their designs, player-made dungeons could add almost unlimited, quality content for creators and consumers alike, but until that happens, whether playing as an avatar or a your character, Dungeon Maker Dungeons will continue to be nothing but token-runs or slapdash jokes.

Oh, and on having to buy the Poet’s Palace layout, that’s really a non-issue. You can buy it for 100 Dungeon Marks which you can earn in two or three runs through one of the many “solo for Marks” dungeons, Take you about 20-30 minutes, tops.

skippydippy

The EQ2 has been out of touch really since Bruce left really,SJ was quite simply the worst thing to happen to the game and i include Brenlo’s ill judged time at the helm and the Dungeon Maker is the prime rib of SJ’s folly,no one,or at best very few are interested in it yet they talk as if it the best thing to hit gaming..ever.

Mentalepsy

- Playing my own character would make DM far more interesting, provided that it was actually balanced properly (one-shotting an entire room of mobs would not be fun at all). The avatars are boring alone and poorly-designed for groups, and it really puts a damper on running player dungeons, especially when so few dungeons have had any effort put into them in the first place.

- The toolset really needs some attention. Even just a few small upgrades would go a long way towards building better dungeons. Even with what we have, though, you can still put together a fun and creative zone, if you put your imagination to it and work within the constraints. Better tools would boost the quality of the top tier of dungeons, and might attract some talented designers who have been put off by the limited toolset thus far, but it wouldn’t do much for the sea of monotonous token grinds.

- I don’t care about having to purchase the layout. I’m more annoyed at the format of the contest. I’ve been wishing for some time for some sort of dungeon maker spotlight from the dev team, so it’s nice that they’re finally doing something along those lines, but I already have two published dungeons that I put a lot of work into. I wouldn’t hesitate to enter them both into a contest, but I probably won’t scramble to brainstorm, design, populate, test and refine a new dungeon for one specific map in only two weeks. I don’t think I’d be proud of the result, let alone that I don’t want to spend two weeks of free time doing nothing but building an EQ2 dungeon, so this isn’t my kind of contest.

- Out of touch? YES. SOE apparently considers Dungeon Maker the flagship feature of Age of Discovery given how much they hype and discuss it, but it’s been totally neglected by development since it came out six months ago. DM could have been a great addition to the game – even within its limited framework, it still can be – but I have mostly lost interest in it, both as a player and as a builder, because it has barely progressed an inch since day one.

Karith

A few items that would make dungeon maker work better for a story teller.

-An item that upon crossing it gives Narrative type chat text(just like the narrative text that appears during most raid encounters for jousts and the IT person on curses or failures). Limited triggers so someone can’t be annoying.

-Triggered effects, like walls falling, animations, NPCs fighting.

-Traps:See Nektropos Castle, versions 2 & 3.

-Ability to create buffs and debuffs based on mob percentages, or positions in a room.

Will being able to play as your own character in Dungeon Maker starting in mid-June increase your interest in Dungeon Maker?
Not really, I actually like playing with the avatars. Not that they’re fun to play with, but I don’t really like adventuring so playing my own char is not really interesting anyway ;p

Is there enough customization to design what you want in Dungeon Maker?
No no no no no. We gave a whole list of stuff we needed. They asked for feedback in community lounges, we said we needed stuff: non aggro NPC, traps, walls, and so on. We got absolutely nothing. And it’s not fun.
On top of that the abysmal loading time of house items in the dungeons is a massive pain and player get stuck all the time.

Is it acceptable that entry into this contest requires purchasing the Poet’s Palace dungeon layout? Does it raise legal questions?
I don’t think it raises legal questions but it should definatedly NOT be limited to Poet’s Palace. It’s one single layout type. It would be better if they advertises DM by creating a contest of all the already published dungeons.

Is the EQ2 team out-of-touch about Dungeon Maker?
Is the EQ2 team “on-touch” on anything?

Katz

Playing your own character is irrelevant to my playing dungeons. I see the dungeons as separate from the main game and avatars are fine for that.

It doesn’t matter about the layout being on marketplace because you can use dungeon marks.

Out of touch? Wow, right now I don’t even see a plan, organization, or overall consistency. I just see haphazard, deer in the headlight, knee jerk, ohhhhh lets try that, no that, no THAT,,,over there! I don’t feel like there is anyone at the helm, in control, that really knows everything about everything in the game. No leader. No vision. I think they are short handed, have been poorly lead, and don’t really know what to do.

Little decisions they make lately have huge impact that they don’t even expect and maybe can’t even understand. Like weaponsmiths not getting throwing weapons. That was the one thing a friend of mine could count on to make money with on her weaponsmith. Now,its kaput. And simply because they don’t know their own game.

Rocky

Will being able to play as your own character in Dungeon Maker starting in mid-June increase your interest in Dungeon Maker?

Depends if it’s balenced. I should also note that it would be neat if there was a dungeon finder feature for the dungeon maker dungeons. Although I wouldn’t want the eq2 team to waste time on that over other things.

Is there enough customization to design what you want in Dungeon Maker?

There’s enough for crafters, because it’s more or less a house. But for adventures there’s barely any switches to make it feel different from any other dungeon. All fluff, no meat. You can’t even brake out of the dungeon. I’ve managed to get myself outside of the dungeon in edit mode, and placed stuff out there, and the entrance. But when I tested the dungeon everything fell to the ground. So it leaves alot to be desired.

Is it acceptable that entry into this contest requires purchasing the Poet’s Palace dungeon layout? Does it raise legal questions?

It makes me raise an eye-brow, but it’s acceptable. Like others have pointed out, it would be much better if you could use any lay-out.

Is the EQ2 team out-of-touch about Dungeon Maker?

It’s more that their plan seems to be to milk money out of players. The reason why dungeon maker is getting so much attention? Because you can buy things for it. The reason why there are less game updates, because they can get us to pay for them now. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it seems like everything that comes out of Soe is made to make us pay more. What happened to making a good service?

Daalilama

Lol…they have been out of touch for some time good devs that developed relationships with the community abd we always willing to respond to our concerns like domino an others either are transfered to eqnext or leave the company altogether… SJ continues to push for more and more dev time to “fix” the unfixable aka dungeon finder/maker while pressing concerns are continually backburnered…more and more station cash items are pushed out but gear itemization a real one is not even on the agenda let alone class balance issues and dont even get me started on the damm zero pvp updates they promised nearly 6 months ago.

[...] challenging for designers and hazardous to adventurers. As this dungeon layout is the key to a contest to drum up interest in the lacklustre Dungeon Maker feature, it’s hard not to see this as another stumble towards [...]

Striinger

Will being able to play as your own character in Dungeon Maker starting in mid-June increase your interest in Dungeon Maker?
It depends, but I highly doubt it. If it’s not TRULY my character…that takes into account the gear, skills and work I’ve put in (i.e. an avatar with my toon’s appearance), then it’s really just another avatar). If it is still my toon, but in a dungeon, then it really depends on the risk v. reward as compared to the ‘dev created’ content. Given the lack of tools for designers, though…I’m not holding my breath.

Is there enough customization to design what you want in Dungeon Maker?
No. It’s not much more than placing flower pots in a room (granted some pots attack). There’s no way to change the way the zone works: walls are transparent to mobs and they run straight through them, mob behavior can’t be configured, scripting cannot be created beyond just ‘words’ (and not sure those work). Unless players are afforded customisation capability on par with devs, at least a bit…then there’s really no competing with content they produce (even if there isn’t much of it). The ONLY reason I’d run limited cookie cutter, uninteresting content over repeating less limited, better designed and interesting dev made stuff…is if the reward was disproportionately large for running player content (which is a lame way to get people into DM).

Is it acceptable that entry into this contest requires purchasing the Poet’s Palace dungeon layout? Does it raise legal questions?
Sure, because you can buy it for 100 marks, too. It’s fair to expect a designer to play one every now and again..and if they don’t want to play, then they get to pay.

Is the EQ2 team out-of-touch about Dungeon Maker?
I think so. I truly don’t get the drive to make a game where levels, AA’s and gear just don’t matter anymore. I’m probably too old-school or atypical, but I do NOT play the game just to see other people scramble around on the screen or kill stuff with me. It seems that with this variant of the “play your way” they are reaching for players who don’t keep score at soccer matches (i.e. people who always lose when they do?). Ambitious goals and progress toward them is what keeps this type of game interesting for me…not the ability to play a game within a game or forcing me to just “linger” with no real objectives. The most popular DM dungeons on my server are ALWAYS the token runs, because those are the only ones worth running…they are the BEST way to achieve what people want: lots of goodies earned in the most efficient manner.

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